Two significant problems in the design and use of cable assemblies are the manufacture of cable terminating elements for connecting the cables to other electrical components and the insertion and withdrawal of the terminating elements from a mating panel or other component in space limited applications where the terminating elements are densely packed. The terminating elements normally consist of contacts attached to the ends of the cable conductors which contacts are supported in some type of housing. The contacts may, for example, be crimped or soldered to the conductors, with the housing being injection molded as a single piece over the contacts and cable or formed as two pieces by molding or similar procedures which pieces are screwed together, are glued together, or are in some way thermally bonded. The injection molding operation, while providing an excellent housing, is relatively slow and may therefore be utilized only where a small number of assemblies are required or where a great deal of equipment may be committed to the operation. The molding operations required to form the housing in two parts may be quickly and easily performed. However, the screwing of the two parts together is undesirable since first, it requires an extra part, and second, the screwing operation is not easily automated and is thus time consuming. Gluing does not normally provided a satisfactory bond while the various thermal bonding techniques are relatively expensive. A need therefore exists for a housing for a cable terminating element or for use with other electrical devices which housing may be quickly, inexpensively and easily formed, preferably without requiring any parts in addition to a pair of molded housing members.
Housing elements are normally inserted and removed manually. However, in high density applications, there is normally not enough space between housings to permit the housings to be manually grasped for insertion or removal. While some tools have been developed for this purpose, they have normally been either relatively complicated, and thus expensive to make and difficult to use, or have not provided for positive gripping of the component. A simple, inexpensive, easily used tool for component insertion and removal, which tool provides for positive gripping of the housing, is thus required. Since the component to which the housing is to be mounted is frequently in relatively dark and inaccessible places, an additional useful feature on any component insertion and removal tool would be a capability for lighting the work area during the insertion and removal operations.